​Food For Neighbors Receives Generous Grants from The Closet​

On April 11, 2021, Food For Neighbors celebrated its partnership with The Closet of the Greater Herndon Area. Over the last several months, The Closet donated a total of $5,000 to Food For Neighbors, a local nonprofit that surprisingly shares much in common with the popular and well-established thrift store.

Gene Wiley, President of the Board of Directors for The Closet, made the presentation to Food For Neighbors founders Karen and Mark Joseph. "The Closet is fortunate that we're in a position to help organizations like Food For Neighbors in the Herndon Area," said Wiley. "We very much admire the work Food For Neighbors is doing in the community."

Like The Closet, Food For Neighbors is a grassroots nonprofit that began in Herndon. Nine years ago when serving as the PTA President for Herndon Middle School, Karen Joseph learned that one in four children in Fairfax County, VA go hungry every day, and she found this particularly troubling, given that Fairfax County is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation. Many of these children rely greatly on free or reduced price meals provided Mondays through Fridays by the schools. Realizing that this leaves students vulnerable to hunger over the weekends, several elementary schools had initiated some type of weekend food program, but the various organizations supporting these could not take on the larger middle and high school populations. In 2016, Karen and Mark Joseph founded Food For Neighbors to fill this weekend food gap for the older students. Food For Neighbors addresses this gap by collecting food via its popular Red Bag Program as well as by distributing grocery gift cards and providing holiday meals.

Also like The Closet, which relies heavily on volunteers and is looking to expand the footprint of its physical space, Food For Neighbors continues to grow to address need. Food For Neighbors currently serves approximately 1,300 students in 23 middle and high schools in Fairfax and Loudoun counties. This is tremendous growth, given the nonprofit started by serving Herndon Middle School and Herndon High School. At that time, the nonprofit had 60 households donating food, which totaled 550 pounds in November 2016, the first food collection. By comparison, during the March 2021 food collection, Food For Neighbors mobilized over 1,227 households to provide over 20,000 pounds of food for students at 23 schools. In all, Food For Neighbors has over 1,500 households registered to provide food, and over 1,000 volunteers committed to collecting and sorting it.

"I love that Food For Neighbors has so much in common with The Closet," shared Karen Joseph. "Mark and I are big fans of the work that The Closet does, and we're extremely grateful for the support. It will make a big difference in the lives of students."

Mark Joseph added, "The Closet is a wonderful nonprofit with a business model that allows it to serve its neighbors in multiple ways. In addition to being a popular spot for donating goods and bargain shopping, The Closet is a leader in providing grants that invest in the Herndon community. This is true leadership."

To learn more about donating to or volunteering with the two local nonprofits, visit their websites. For The Closet, visit http://theclosetofgreaterherndon.org/. For Food For Neighbors, visit https://www.foodforneighbors.org/.